(Howdy, I'm a distant relative-by-marriage of Susan's, hitchhiking off of her journal comments.)

What goes into the "output" measured in the labor productivity chart? I presume that it must be some sort of monetary measurement, like capital gains? Assuming things like inflation and accounting errors have been taken out accurately?

The shifting of risk and volatility onto individuals could certainly be related, though maybe not quite so directly. My guess is the income volatility is more of a symptom, and "risk" is a catch-all for several different factors.

I'm thinking the direct cause-and-effect is the increase in debt: individual, industrial, institutional, national. The productivity growth is reflecting the general increase of income created by all that artificial pseudo-wealth floating around.

(warning - not an economist!)

I believe it's something like inflation-adjusted GDP per hour of labor.

My shapeless quasi-hypothesis would go something like this: In þe Olden Timeſ (e.g., 30 years ago) we had job security, pensions, health insurance, a higher (inflation-adjusted) minimum wage, and unemployment benefits. All of these things cost somebody money -- presumably employers. So all of them would be a drag on profits, therefore on capital available for infrastructure investment, therefore on GDP, therefore on productivity, as measured.

Oh, also, consumer expenditure is one of the things that figures into GDP, so I suspect the fact that we’ve all run up such big credit card balances may have something to do with it, too.

Anyway, it seems to like all that ought to affect the productivity figures, but I don’t know how much, or whether anyone’s run the numbers.